The main concept of Storage Virtualization lies in abstraction of logical resources from their physical units. In situation when hardware units can be located wide apart, the possibility to present them as a single storage and manage it through a single storage server is very valuable in modern business world.

The most important requirement for any data storage is High Availability (HA). It is a technology that keeps your data secure, crash-proof and permanently available for users. HA provides different tools for reducing any kind of risk: data disaster recovery technologies, logical replication, parallel saving procedures and resuming of back-up periods.

With appropriate software, which utilizes iSCSI protocol, you can create a fast, cheap and reliable iSCSI SAN (also called IP SAN or just iSCSI SAN). iSCSI is abbreviation for Internet SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), an IP-based protocol dedicated to connect and manage data storage devices. It encapsulates SCSI commands to Ethernet packages and use common Ethernet network for transfer them for long distances. ISCSI technology is fast, safe and considerably cheaper and simpler than Fiber Channel. This protocol works on initiators (clients according to the client-server architecture) and targets (data storages, servers according to the client-server architecture): iSCSI initiator starts sessions sending a SCSI command, and iSCSI target answers with some action.

StarWind HA iSCSI SAN solution is very convenient for SMB and mid-level business, providing enterprise features for affordable prices.